What shall hereinafter be referred to as order display apparatus, including order racks or order wheels, enjoy usage in a variety of different contexts in the hospitality industry nowadays, as for example in restaurants and in commercial kitchens, wherein information is to be displayed, temporarily, for purposes of use as by actioning in a predetermined or variable order of priority.
Throughout the ensuing specification the expression “order” is intended to refer to, in particular, a listing of food requested by a customer, or one or more customers, in a restaurant, café, bistro, or the like establishment. Such listing, selected from the different items set out on a menu, a notice board etc., will be taken from the customer (or customers) by a waiter/waitress, for example, to be delivered to the cooking/catering area to be filled.
In any restaurant or commercial kitchen, regardless of size or output, it is an established practice for meal orders to be taken from customers, as by waiters and/or waitresses, and then forwarded to the kitchen or cooking area for filling. Whether a meal order is in the form of a hand-written sheet, card or the like, or in electronic form, the aim of the exercise, so as to “keep the customer satisfied”, is to have such orders filled in a timely manner, for delivery to the customer, whether that customer be intending to consume the meal in the restaurant or take it away. Furthermore, in any restaurant, cafeteria or the like the aim should almost invariably be to have orders filled on a “first in, then first out” basis. This means that orders need to be arranged/displayed and viewable by the cook/chef/kitchen staff to ensure proper management and expeditious completion of any and all orders.
Once the order(s) is(are) delivered to the kitchen, whether physically or electronically, it(they) need to be displayed so as to allow the kitchen staff/chefs/cooks to fill them, more preferably in the order received chronologically or in some other preferred order. It has been an established practice in restaurants and the like establishments to have, within the kitchen area, means for displaying the orders so as to allow them to be actioned or filled as appropriate.
Order display apparatus of this general type can take the form of either an elongate rack, to which orders can be removably attached, being added at one end and removed at the other, and progressively moved from one end to the other as they are actioned. With a display apparatus of the elongate rack type, movement of orders is conventionally achieved by first actually physically or manually removed from the rack and repositioning thereon. Orders are permanently removed when filled. In the alternative, all order display apparatus can take the form of a wheel or loop structure adapted to receive orders, that wheel being rotatable to allow for adding of new orders or removal of filled orders.
In a restaurant or commercial kitchen, an order rack or order wheel may preferably located so as to be readily accessible to both waiters and waitresses—who are responsible for taking/accepting meal orders from customers/diners—and the kitchen staff/chefs—who are responsible for filling such orders by cooking the relevant meals/food. Alternatively, the order rack or wheel will be located in the kitchen area, for access by the cooking staff. One current practice is that, after an order or orders is or taken and written or in some other way noted, or in an alternative entered an order or orders in a computerised point-of-sale system such order or orders will be attached to, the order rack or wheel. The kitchen staff can then, at their leisure, access the orders either manually or after printing out a copy of an electronic order, and prepare the meals in accord therewith which, when ready, are collected by the waiters and waitresses for delivery/serving to the diner(s).
With either arrangement, once an order is being prepared the cook/kitchen staff will either move filled orders laterally of the rack or rotate the wheel, whereby to allow access to/viewing of subsequent and as not yet filled orders.
The wheel generally keeps the orders in chronological order of time taken, so that the first order placed on the wheel is the first order started to be prepared by the chef/cool/kitchen staff. When an order is completed, the check for such order is removed from the wheel and placed with the plate or plates of food ordered on a counter for the waiter/waitress to pick up and deliver to the diner. When a check is removed from the wheel, the wheel is advanced by the chef/cook/kitchen staff to get to the next order check. While an order wheel is effective for moving order checks from the waiter/waitress to the chef/cook, particularly where the chef/cook works on only one or two meals at a time, where several meals are being worked on at the same time the chef/cook has to continually turn the wheel back and forth to find the particular order being worked on and to keep the orders in time order on the wheel.